Too Weary to Change?

These days, laments are often the only prayers I have.

I’m simultaneously shocked and unsurprised at the capriciousness, incompetence, and cruelty of political leaders whose vision of the nation and the world is clouded by greed, prejudice, and arrogance. I’m no longer startled yet saddened by other leaders, political and cultural, whose cravenness and their attempts to justify it are tragic and laughable in a laugh-to-keep-from-crying or cry-while-laughing way.

At the same time, I have friends who worry that they will lose their jobs or that they will lose themselves to their jobs; who have poison drugs flowing through their bodies in hopes those drugs will counteract the toxic illness which threatens their lives; whose hearts are broken over shattered relationships; whose bright dreams for the future have darkened into nightmares; and whose depression careens toward despair.

I’m also deeply troubled—thankfully, I’m far from alone—that the name and image of Jesus are being corrupted and coopted to conscript people to support an agenda which bears no resemblance to his teachings in his parables and the Sermon on the Mount or to his deeds of self-giving, healing, and all-welcoming love.

Lament is sometimes my sole response: admitting the grief, anger, anxiety, and frustration I feel. My prayers of lament are tears, protests, complaints, and questions.

I find words for my ongoing griefs and anxieties in scripture, especially the psalms and prophets of the Hebrew Bible. During this Lenten season, the daily lectionary from the Book of Common Prayer has suggested readings from the Hebrew prophets, among others.

Recently, one of those passages was Jeremiah 8:19-9:6, who felt painful disbelief that most leaders in Jerusalem were convinced that God was bound, even obligated, to protect and promote them no matter what they did, because, after all, they were God’s people. These leaders were lying to themselves and deceiving others. About them, Jeremiah said: “They bend their tongues like bows; they have grown strong in the land for falsehood, and not for truth . . . They all deceive their neighbors, and no one speaks the truth” (9:3, 5a).

To the prophet, the possibility of healing seemed dim. In words familiar to us from the spiritual they inspired, he asked: “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of my poor people not been restored?” (8:22). Gilead was renowned for healing herbs and skilled practitioners of the healing arts. It wasn’t that there were no medicines or doctors. It was that too many of the people didn’t know they were sick or, if they did, would not take their medicine.

The morning I read this passage, words I’d not noticed before arrested my attention: “They commit iniquity and are too weary to repent” (9:5b). “Too weary to repent” is how the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition translates the Hebrew, though some textual experts opt for a rendering based on the Greek text, something like: “they weary themselves with sin.”

For me, too weary to repent bristles with insight.

What if some people are so worn-down and worn-out by chaos, crisis, and conflict that they don’t have the energy or the hope to change and to work for change?

What if people bought the deceptions slyly and steadily marketed to them and, even though reality now clashes with the views they invested in, they can’t summon the will to walk away and in a new direction?

What if famed football coach Vince Lombardi was right and “fatigue” really does “make cowards of us all”? For years, I’ve been dealing with illness and treatments which present me with the challenge of ongoing fatigue. It would be easier to acquiesce fully to it but easier would be emptier. Not to acquiesce completely, though, I need other people: the love and support of family, the encouragement of friends, the help of medical caregivers, investment in serving others, and a faith-community which tells and enacts the story of Jesus. We’re dependent on others for true rest and recovery, whatever the causes.

Jesus said: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Pervasive and unremitting exhaustion of our faith, hope, love, and joy is a call to be sure the life we’re living is a life shaped by the ways, gentleness, and humility of Jesus. With him and with one another, we can overcome the weariness that prevents change.